A FIELD TRIAL OF A TEATCUP ATTACHMENT ROBOT FOR AN AUTOMATIC MILKING SYSTEM

The work reported here was the first extended trial of Silsoe Research Institute's automatic milking system. A group of 10 cows in late lactation was milked three times a day for 12 consecutive days. Of the total of 1440 automatic teatcup attachments that were attempted, 84% succeeded, 6% failed due to malfunctions of the system, 2% failed due to design faults and 8% failed for unknown reasons. All four teatcups were attached on 68% of the 360 times that a cow was presented for automatic teatcup attachment. The results indicated that a single accurate measure of teat position at the start of the attachment process would probably improve the performance of the system. The median time taken to attach four teatcups was about 2 min. © 1993 Silsoe Research Institute.